


Periastron

by rednihilist



Series: Ecliptic [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:01:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednihilist/pseuds/rednihilist
Summary: Jaime looks at Ned Stark’s not-son, at the Prince’s son, at the King’s grandson, and he spots that same melancholy, that same fatalistic streak.–gold bracketing green–
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: Ecliptic [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/452122
Kudos: 24





	Periastron

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No profit is gained from this writing—only, hopefully, enjoyment.
> 
> A/N: Been sitting on this for awhile. :/

Jaime isn’t surprised.

It makes sense to him.

It’s always made sense to him though: symmetry, like to like. It’s simple and always has been.

Jaime—he hasn’t ever really thought about it another way. Life is what it is, this one like all others. People are people. Why should anything be more complex than that?

It isn’t. He is who he is: he is Cersei, and she is Jaime; she is he, and he is she.

They’ve always been and always will be one and the same.

Complementary.

Right?

And wrong.

Thick and thin.

He is the worst of them, no doubt about it, and she’s the best, but he can also be the good, she the terrible.

Cersei has always been ruthless. Jaime’s, mayhaps, surprisingly lax sometimes.

This young queen, this young Targaryen, for all she’s drawn comparisons to Cersei in terms of beauty, cunning, and power: she reminds Jaime of no one so much as her own, gods save them, good-sister, Elia.

Elia Martell: now there was a woman unlike any other.

Well, almost.

Right?

(Unlike any other but one _other_.)

Some would say Elia was a rose, a flower, something heady and lush, exotic, and she was assuredly different and all but intoxicating, but she wasn’t tamed or tended to like a flower.

Her smile, her laugh, her _eyes_. 

Elia, like another infamous Dornish woman (and much like Jaime’s only— _other_ woman), was stubborn and steadfast and direct. She wasn’t Cersei, and she wasn’t the Queen or dear and departed Johanna, _Mama_ , and she wasn’t the fucking Tully sisters or the Southerners or the Notherners, but Elia wasn’t the women down in Fleabottom either.

He remembers meeting her the first time, her and her brother. He’d liked them. He’d wanted them to stay or himself to follow.

Squire. He would have gladly squired for Doran in Dorne.

Somewhere: away.

Gratefully.

–and mayhaps, in another world, another time. . .

(Elia, bold and righteous, forever reminds him so much of Bri– )

Elia, though, she was calm, eerily so. She was clear and concise and shockingly morbid, bold and with a foul mouth, even as a young maid, even at the end—at her end.

He’d admired her. (Still does.) Jaime can remember basing decisions on what he thought Elia would think or say.

Not the other knights.

Not Selmy or Dayne or Darry or—the other Martell.

Well, maybe a little bit, them, but mostly:

“Melee?” he’d asked. “Or jousting?”

Dayne laughed into his cups; that’s the image Jaime retains. 

Elia’d smirked and reached out to pluck some imaginary piece of fluff from his pauldron.

“Why, all, of course,” she’d said. He can still just about hear the bitten-off hiss of her final word.

Would _Elia_ smile or smirk or scowl or harangue him for this or that? Would she nod at him? Would she even look?

He was lonely back then; he missed his other half.

They both were, and they both did.

Shared fragility doesn’t always translate into compatibility, but he thinks– theirs bridged the gaps. Elia felt much the same as he, trapped in that fucking court with no one. Elia was right where Jaime was, and they both were raw ends.

He can remember smiling at something he imagined she’d say. The Sers were not amused.

Nor the Hand.

Nor the King.

The King thought Jaime simple or impudent or traitorous or likely all three at once. Aerys had little time for him, truth be told.

And the Prince. . .

Elia was the afternoon sun drifting into evening. She wasn’t Cersei who got him out of bed, but she was hope, even when she was—dwindling. She had a bite to her. She stirred in him feelings.

Jaime remembered Elia Martell before she was Elia Targaryen, and he remembered, sometimes, when he could, Cersei before Robert, before the war, before they were two, before he was alone.

He can almost remember himself before then too:

—jumping off those cliffs, sunshine sparking blindingly along the water, and the sound of love and laughter, brief touches, bold as their gold hair streaming across green eyes, gold beaches bracketing sky and sea.

Daenerys Targaryen is like that, still hopeful, still alive, still jumping and insanely bold, but she’s also contained in a way Jaime hasn’t seen but once or twice.

Elia.

And the other, with her purple eyes.

Dayne’s sister—Ashara.

Stark’s love.

And his—son.

(Not his son, as it turns out.)

Jaime remembers when Cersei was more, when she looked at him like Daenerys looks at Ned Stark’s so-called son.

(And isn’t that the punch line? Ned Stark: bastion of secrets.)

Jaime knows what being in love feels and looks like, and he can remember seeing it too.

It isn’t a matter of loving or not loving Cersei though. He can’t not. He’s tried not to.

But it’s different when one doesn’t respect the other, when one doesn’t like the other or recognize what the other has turned into, when one, when he, feels ashamed for loving the other for the first time ever. 

Of course he loves her, but he can’t stand her.

And of course this Targaryen is in love with Snow.

They’re complementary, aren’t they? A matched set like Jaime and Cersei.

(A set, like Jaime and Br– )

Doubles, some lord had said, once upon a time.

“Is that the spare?” he’d joked to Lord Tywin, and Jaime still isn’t sure if he’d been gesturing towards Jaime or Cersei.

Father hadn’t laughed or smiled, of course.

Cersei hadn’t thought it funny either, but Jaime had. He still does.

He’s the double, the spare.

Cersei, Father, Tyrion—Jaime’s the oddball.

And he’s always seen the humor and the pain, and he’s always sought to move past it.

Cersei is ensnared, tangled up, waylaid by all the details and thorny jabs of everyone with half a brain, but Jaime’s always had his eye on the horizon, the bigger picture, the war and not the battle.

In what world isn’t that the way of things? Don’t people always keep reaching for what they can’t have?

Jaime tries for peace, for calm, for something kind and sweet and sleepy and beautiful.

And doesn’t he stumble upon it, when it’s all said and done, if only in flashes.

Cersei keeps reaching for war and violence, thirsts for the revenge she’s never achieved.

“Is that the spare?”

Laughter.

Jaime’s the spare, the changeling, the optimist.

Hasn’t he been running after love all his life?

Mayhaps that’s fate. The gods play tricks on them all.

They call Brienne “Beauty” in jest, but she’ll always be a much better knight and lady than either Jaime or Cersei.

They call Brienne “Beauty” in jest and ugly and coarse in reality, but she is— _painfully_ beautiful. Brienne is the result of people believing stories and living their lives accordingly.

She’s what goodness and honesty look like in person.

She is the embodiment of beauty and truth

Her _body_ , her soul, her mind. . .

And she looks at _him_. She levels Jaime with her gaze.

That’s beauty.

No matter what any poor or lordly shithole with a mouth bigger than his face might say, love, true love, is always beautiful, and true love is never happy.

It’s never happier than for a moment, anyway. That’s what makes it beautiful and not happy, beautiful, not contentment, beautiful, not pretty.

Beauty and love have to be painful, or else they’re not real.

Hence, of course, the spark Jaime catches that others often unknowingly lob towards him.

Hence, of course, _of course_ , that look in Tyrion’s own eyes sometimes as he meets Jaime’s eyes.

After all, Jaime’s no stranger to outliers of feeling. He knows from lust, obsession, and, yes, the hatred that grows from the deepest sorts of regard.

He thinks of Father and Cersei, and he remembers Ser Barristan and Ser Dayne.

He recalls Elia.

Not Prince Rhaegar, who only ever briefly smiled at him, patronizing, perfunctory, already past him on his way down the hall, but Jaime recalls their princess, her dark, sad eyes and smirking mouth.

He remembers and knows, still, Elia, with her long dark hair and hauntingly emotive face.

She’d tried to play the game, and she’d lost.

(But had she? She died, beautifully and meaningfully, but she died with her children. She died a martyr.)

Jaime looks at Ned Stark’s not-son, at the Prince’s son, at the King’s grandson, and he spots that same melancholy, that exact same fatalistic streak.

–gold bracketing green–

Jaime’s dreamed of playing and sweeping the board clean, but he’s never even sat at the table.

He’s fantasized about rescuing and being rescued, and he’s still not sure that last isn’t what doomed them all. What if he’d waited? What if he hadn’t waited? What if one time he got it right?

And now there’s a moment, a flash, a spark of something when he meets others’ eyes, the kind that has the hind portion of Jaime’s brain weighing and ultimately discarding every scenario.

(Not Stark but not not Stark but also Targaryen; not Targaryen but not not Targaryen but not Darry or Mormont; not Greyjoy and not Stark but still Greyjoy and Stark and, yes, Bolton; not Stark and not Lannister and not Arryn and not Bolton and not Tully but still—Stark and Bolton and Tully.)

But between the weighing and the discarding, he does, as Tyrion would say, _reflect_.

Those sparks have always been there, popping up in everyone’s eyes, looking back at him with equal parts wonder and judgment. They’ve been there since he was young, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Great and noble and poor alike, they’ve all looked at him the same, and he knows for a fact they looked at Cersei that way too: like flowers and meat and jewelry and everything lovely to have and own and not give a damn about beyond possessing and _owning_.

People look at them like they’re objects, like they’re for sale to the right bidder, like they don’t breathe and think and feel.

Tyrion only sometimes looked at Jaime like that before, but he does more often now. He peers at Jaime from across the throne room that’s like every other damn throne room, and it’s Tyrion, but it’s also simultaneously everyone else, all peering at him, all wondering and wanting and condemning.

And Jaime thinks. He thinks for himself.

And he isn’t surprised.

After all, it makes sense to him.

But then, it’s always made sense to him.

It’s symmetry, like to like. It’s simple and always has been.


End file.
